This food makes you grumpy

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the foodies of online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it, and what to cook. This time our chefs serve you: food that makes you grumpy.

Not every meal makes you happy and cheerful. Some dishes can leave you with a downright bad mood. How come? And which groceries should you better skip if you want to keep things a bit cozy at home?

Nutritionist Claudia Smith has discovered that so-called comfort food is actually not good for your mood. All that sugar and carbohydrates give you a sugar rush, after which you become grumpy, tired, and distracted.

Comfort food? No?
Huh? But it's called comfort food because it makes you feel better? That's right, says the scientist, but that's because we see that food as a reward. You have a broken heart or stress, so you allow yourself to eat a whole tube of Pringles – like now, during corona time. Have we all become happier and more cheerful? Not really. And Smith doesn't find that strange. She provides a list of eight things that can demonstrably worsen your mood.

1. Alcohol
Headache, heartburn, poor sleep, hangover: do you need more reasons? A little alcohol isn't bad, it generally even makes you a bit happier, but too much drink – and according to the expert, that's already more than one glass a day – can ruin your mood, especially the next day.

2. Soft drinks
Soda is packed with sugar, which is quickly absorbed by your body. Result: sugar rush, and then a drained feeling. Light soda then? Maybe not, because too much aspartame is linked to mild depression and anxiety disorders. So stick to water and tea, advises Smith.

3. Coffee
A cup of comfort, it's not called that for nothing. But don't take too much, says British dietitian Tai Ibitoye, because too much caffeine makes you nervous and irritable. The Nutrition Center advises a maximum of four cups of coffee per day.

4. Cake, pastries, cookies
If it were up to the experts, we could only secretly buy cake and cookies from dealers on the corner of the street. Every tasty pastry contains sugar, and we've already complained about that, combined with fat, like butter, and carbohydrates: it can't get much worse. But wait a minute: other research shows that baking a cake is actually good for stress!

5. Fries
Also on the list of forbidden foods. Too salty, say the experts, too much saturated fat and then all those carbohydrates. Belgium, are you reading along? As a substitute, they recommend quinoa and brown rice.

6. Bad snacks
You were already afraid of this: chips, pizza rolls, frikandellen, and other so-called processed foods are bad, worse, worst. They cause a spike in energy, and then a kind of food coma. Something tasty is certainly allowed, say the experts, but cut these snacks from the weekly menu and eat them very occasionally as a treat.

7. Donuts
The road to hell is paved with... donuts, according to nutrition experts. Not hard to figure out why: carbohydrates, sugar, fat. And in the filling, there might be a strawberry or a raspberry, but not enough to count towards the two hundred grams of vegetables, two pieces of fruit. Tip from dietitian Ibitoye: a brown sandwich is just as tasty.

8. Ham, sausage, and other cold cuts
Most cold cuts are very salty and also contain many preservatives and flavor enhancers, all not so healthy. Of course, you can get to work yourself: instead of ready-made chicken fillet for on bread, you can bake or grill a chicken fillet and slice it. Nutrition scientists see an advantage to cold cuts: they contain a lot of protein, and that could actually improve your mood.

So nothing is allowed anymore?
A list to become quite grumpy from, to be honest. Is there absolutely nothing left? If you've been feeling down, sluggish, and depressed for a while, it's not a bad idea to take a look at what you eat in a day – maybe a salad will cheer you up more than yet another bag of Chocotofs. But munching away a parking fine with a bag of M&M's won't push you to the brink of a clinical depression, and a bottle of prosecco to celebrate a new assignment won't turn you into a sour alcoholic either. You know what, we'll think about it a bit more. Who takes the last slice of cake? Home-baked, against the stress!